(9) VENETIAN REPUBLIC (697 – 1797 AD)
Venice may have laid its claim as an assassin using the Fourth Crusade as its weapon, but it did lay claim to be “lord of a fourth part and a half of the whole Empire of Romania” – or three eighths of the eastern Roman Empire – after Constantinople fell to the Crusade in 1204 AD, extending to a significant part of the occupation of Constantinople itself and hence my primary criterion for high-tier ranking.
Venice had a weird love-hate symbiotic-parasitic relationship with the eastern Roman Empire – evolving from an imperial province and vassal in the empire’s reconquest of Italy, to ally and close associate of the empire effectively as its navy and trading house, and ultimately to rival and perfidious adversary in the Fourth Crusade.
In some ways, that symbiosis involved Venice as almost the inversion of Constantinople – the heart of a mercantile empire which waxed and rose, sucking from the blood of the latter as it waned and fell. Although ironically, Venice found its fortune to be little more symbiotic with Constantinople than it would have liked after all – declining as it faced the Ottoman Empire more directly once the Ottomans captured Constantinople, and not coincidentally, the decline of Mediterranean trade relative to the Atlantic, although it endured until 1797 when it finally fell in the face to the French under Napoleon.
Venice was also somewhat antagonistic to Rome – even as it resembled the latter’s classical republic, down to it also being an imperial republic, albeit more in the classical Greek model of a maritime colonial empire with a focus on its naval power and trade. Of course, the world had moved on from when a single city state could dominate first the Italian peninsula and then the whole Mediterranean like the Romans did – although Venice did punch remarkably above its weight, going toe-to-toe with the Ottoman Empire for four centuries or so of Ottoman-Venetian wars.
Venice is reputed to have been settled by refugees from the Huns and Germanic invaders of the Roman Empire seeking the safety of its islands. It was founded as the Duchy of Venetia within the eastern Roman Empire’s Exarchate of Ravenna – its leader’s title of Doge originating from the Latin for dux (or duke) as an imperial provincial title. It became increasingly independent as the Exarchate of Ravenna crumbled, until effectively achieving de facto independence because of an agreement between the Holy Roman Empire and the eastern Roman Empire.
Venice remained nominally subservient to the eastern Roman Empire but abandoned even that over the next century. However, it remained closely associated with Constantinople, by way of trade and as an ally – essentially gaining exclusive privileges in the former in exchange for the use of its navy in the latter, firstly against the Normans in Italy and then against the Turks. Significantly, Venice acknowledged its homage to the empire against the Normans, but not subsequently against the Turks – reflecting the decline of the eastern Roman empire and the rise of Venice.
The rise of Venice (and its role as creditor to the empire) ultimately saw it become the empire’s rival and adversary, which bore bitter fruit when Venice played that instrumental role pulling the strings of the Fourth Crusade to divert it to capture Constantinople instead, leading to my next special mention entry…
RATING: 4 STARS****
B-TIER (TOP TIER)